Summer of Recovery Life Support

Aug 6, 2010

RUSH: Rasmussen Reports has a poll out: ‘Eighty-six percent (86%) of voters nationwide say there should be ‘limits on what the federal government can do.” Now, 86 percent? I haven’t seen a poll with 86 percent in anything. But there already is. It’s called the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution was written specifically and expressly to limit what the federal government can do. Now, if this 86 percent thinks that we need to limit what government can do, it’s obviously because they are noticing what this regime is doing — which is a positive. But I mean, it’s — I don’t know — a little depressing to me to hear a poll, 86 percent think ‘there should be ‘limits on what the federal government can do,” when there already are. One of the most brilliant documents every written limits what the government can do.

In this Rasmussen poll 9% want no limits on what the government can do. Nine percent. That is, when you stop and think about that, that is the extent of support that Obama has. Nine percent! It is this kind of minority that is ruling us. It’s just amazing. Job growth remains… Here is Obama on television on an economic outing, talking about all the jobs that have been ‘created.’ All of the month-by-month jobs that have been created because of his policies. We are not in a ‘recovery,’ folks, we are on life-support in this country. Now, I’m okay with math, semi literate with math (numbers are not my strong suit), but I’m having a hard time squaring a numerical loss of jobs with all this talk of ‘weak’ recovery and ‘job growth.’

This headline, this is the Politico: ‘Job Growth Remains Week.’ What job growth? I admit I’m weak on numbers, but when the job numbers are the fact that 131,000 jobs were lost in July, where is the growth? I don’t understand. ‘The unemployment rate held steady at 9.5%%.’ It’s actually 15-16 percent, and everybody living life understands this. The regime is doing everything it can to keep that number below ten. That is the tipping point. If that number gets to ten or goes over it, then they think they have a problem. ‘Overall, the Labor Department reported, nonfarm payroll employment fell 131,000 in July and the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5 percent. The job losses included the elimination of 143,000 temporary census workers. The jobs report for June was revised sharply lower.’

Everything we were told in June about job growth was a lie. ‘Payrolls actually fell 221,000 during the month [of June] rather than the previously reported decline of 125,000,’ but that is not the number they were all using. The partisan political operative media was talking about 31,000 jobs created in June! Remember that? Thirty-one thousand jobs were created. They didn’t talk about the 125,000 that were lost which now is 221,000. ‘The private sector created only 31,000 jobs in June, not the 83,000 previously reported.’ So I’m having a tough time understanding the numerical loss of jobs with the talk of a ‘weak’ recovery, or any kind of a recovery, or this Politico headline: ‘Job Growth Remains Weak.’ I have actually a couple of news stories here. Reuters is one.

‘Employment fell for a second straight month in July as more temporary census jobs ended while private hiring rose less than expected, pointing to an anemic economic recovery.’ Employment fell two consecutive months. How can we have a ‘weak recovery’? We are on life support. We don’t have a recovery. If I were running, of course, news organizations, I would say, ‘We’re all mired in a slow economic decline that is being managed artfully by the regime.’ At this rate, folks, our economy is going to be weakly recovering on its way to a depression. ‘Job Growth Remains Weak.’ The partisan political operatives in the old media have a strange way of communicating with us. I would have said, ‘Private sector job growth remains dangerously weak given the administration’s trillion dollar stimulus bill.’

Aaaaall the stimulus that we have had? Obama has been lying through his teeth about all the jobs that have been created. How do you lose 131,000 jobs in July and still have unemployment be 9.5%? None of these numbers make any sense whatsoever — and we have had all the stimulus, and we have had all of these bailouts, and we’re still losing jobs. You know, leaking, spilling, losing, what have you. The economy overall is continuing to shed jobs. Now, I’m all for losing public sector jobs because those are a huge drain on the private sector. But the headline says at Politico: ‘Job Growth Remains Weak.’ There isn’t any job growth. There are job losses in the public sector, mild job gains in the private sector.

And I don’t think we can even trust these numbers because June is being revised downward. So what is this 131,000 going to be in August? What are they going to tell us the 131,000 really is in 30 days? 150,000? 175,000? Can we go ahead and guess? The experts never know. The experts are constantly and always shocked and surprised by this. If it were me, I would be saying the economy is headed in the wrong direction. Maybe I just don’t get it. Maybe I don’t. Now, as we get closer to these January tax increases, who in the world thinks that private sector job growth is going to accelerate? We’re not in a recovery. There’s no recovery whatsoever. We are on life support, and Pelosi is bringing back the House to spend billions of dollars we don’t have on states who cannot afford their public sector workers.

The patient is dying. The patient is not recovering. And all we get out of this is Christina Romer quitting. Christina Romer, the Council of Economic Advisers, is splitting the scene. Supposedly she doesn’t get along with Larry Summers. That is the rumor out there. That’s the rumor out there. Of course, why not? Larry Summers, according to women in Harvard, hates women. Christina Romer is going back to her gig teaching economics at Berkeley, UC-California Berkeley. What people have forgotten about Christina Romer is that she has written in the past of the magic of tax rate reductions leading to economic growth. They had to scrub that from any website that has quoted her saying that. So she is gone. Now look at the five quotes here. They are all from Reuters.

”The perception that there is job growth and an economic recovery is underway appears to be a myth,’ said Todd M. Schoenberger, managing director, LandColt Trading.’ Number 2: ”The foundation for employment growth occurs in promising consumer sentiment and confidence readings — both of which continue to be frighteningly low,’ Schoenberger said.’ Number 3: ‘Today’s number does not initiate a Fed policy move, but the overall trend does,’ Schoenberger said, and then gave us number 4: ‘Investors should be on high alert when Bernanke &amp; Co. get together on Tuesday.” Number 5: ‘Art Cashin, director of floor operations at UBS Financial Services, said on CNBC he think July’s employment figures could dim prospects for the stock market. ‘We may be getting ready to put a top on this summer rally here.”

That is a Reuters story. ‘Futures Fall Sharply After Jobs Report,’ and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now 136 right now, 136-1/2. ”The perception that there is job growth and an economic recovery is underway appears to be a myth,’ said Todd M. Schoenberger, managing director, LandColt Trading.’ Reuters went out and found this guy. Here is more. ‘To jolt economy…’ In fact, I want to go back to the past. What we have done here is gone back and gotten news stories from the past that highlight Obama’s promises and Bite Me’s promises for stimulating the economic recovery. This is a story from U.S. News and World Reports that ran December 9, 2008: ‘To Jolt Economy, Obama and Congress Eye Billions in Infrastructure Spending.’

Number 2: ‘Stimulus Jolt: Obama Promises 600,000 Jobs in 100 Days,’ from the LA Times, June 8, 2009, a little over a year ago. Number 3: ‘Experts: Economic Stimulus Plan Would be a Short-term Shot in the Arm.’ February 11, 2008. Sarah Lockyer, Nation’s Restaurant News. Number 4: ‘Politics Today: A New Stimulus Jolt,’ September 30, 2009. That is CBS News. That is all stuff in the past. Obama’s stimulus and all of the infrastructure spending was going to ‘jolt’ the economy and he promised 600,000 jobs in a hundred days. And Biden is out there saying, ‘We’re going to be,’ by this time, ‘producing 500,000 jobs a month.’ Now we’re in the ‘Summer of Recovery,’ halfway through, and not recovering. We’re on life support.

We go back and look at what all of these people said. Biden, Obama, and others in the media were promising all this great stuff as a result of the stimulus spending. Let’s move to the present. Stephen Dinan, Washington Times: ‘Social Security in the Red — Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program’s actuary.’ I don’t care where you look, and I’m in the trying to be a downer here, but we have to call these people out when they make things up about an economic recovery and how things are going. ‘How bad would it be if we hadn’t done what we had done?’ Now Obama is out using Bush’s name. Using his name, not just talking about his ‘predecessor.’ He’s actually criticizing Bush by name on a number of things.

So I hate to sit here and tell you the truth about things, but you have to know it (I’m sure most of you do) and it isn’t being reported. Now, Obama went to all these auto factories. He went to Ford, General Motors. I wonder if he will be talking to the employees at these places? ‘Postal Service Loses $3.5 Billion, Concerned with Future Liquidity.’ Will Obama show up and give them a pep talk?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Obama this afternoon at Gelberg Signs speaking about this in Washington, speaking about the economy. This is the leader of the regime lying, just plain lying.

OBAMA: (godlike echo) The road to recovery doesn’t follow a straight line. The Department of Labor released its monthly jobs report showing that July marked the seventh straight month of job creation in the private sector. We’ve now added private sector jobs every month this year, instead of losing them as we did for the first seven months of last year — and that’s a good sign.

RUSH: What?

EMPLOYEES: (tepid applause)

RUSH: That was a tepid bunch of applause. We lost 131,000 jobs in July and in June the figures were revised downward to over 200,000 jobs lost and the man actually said, ‘The Department of Labor released its monthly jobs report showing that July marked the seventh straight month of job creation in the private sector.’ We’re at 131,000 jobs down, unemployment is at 9.5%, and we’re creating jobs? We have a recovery going on? We don’t. We are on life support. Here’s more Obama…

OBAMA: Our manufacturing sector, that has been hit hard for as long as folks can remember, has actually added 183,000 jobs this year.

RUSH: Really?

OBAMA: That’s the most robust seven months of manufacturing growth in over a decade.

EMPLOYEES: (silence followed by a smattering of applause)

RUSH: Really?

OBAMA: Just this morning there was a report about the growing trends of manufacturing plants returning to the United States from overseas instead of the other way around.

RUSH: Really?

OBAMA: All three U.S. auto makers are now posting a profit for first time since 2004, and since they emerged from bankruptcy, the auto industry as a whole has added 76,000 jobs. So there’s some good trends out there.

RUSH: This is all made up. That is all made up. This ‘road to recovery’ is a U-turn. There is no recovery. I mean, this is just blatant lying — and you wait until health care kicks in. When taxes actually go up, when energy actually becomes more expensive and less available — when the real effects of the monstrosity that is the Obama regime and this Congress take effect — the name Barack Obama will be worse than the name of Herbert Hoover. We had Hoovervilles then; we have Obamavilles today. He says jobs have been created every month this year. We should all be celebrating, right? Trillions of dollars in deficit spending and Obama believes 9.5% percent unemployment is a great success? Okay, Democrats, go run on that. Obama is telling you how to campaign. You go out there and run on, ‘Why, we’re on a road to recovery!’ All these brand new private sector jobs, it’s worth throwing a party. We should all be celebrating. I’m sure the media can find all the celebrations. I’m sure the media will be able to find all the pockets in the country where people are really feeling good about the country all of a sudden and will be able to do news stories on that, right? And the Democrats can run on all of this new hiring and all the excitement, all of the good vibes of the economic recovery. He is out there praising himself for 9.5% unemployment, praising himself for foreclosures and bankruptcies. So here is the deal: If you like where the economy is and you want more of it, then it’s very simple. Vote Democrat.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Can you imagine the party we’re going to have when unemployment gets up to 10% from the current 9.5%?Can you imagine how it’s going to look watching him pat himself on the back for that achievement? Whoa! Can’t wait! Happy days are here again thanks to the regime!

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Cincinnati. We start with David. Great to have you on the EIB network. How.

CALLER: Hi, Rush, how are you?

RUSH: Very well, thank you.

CALLER: I want to discuss the declining wages of people who are actually getting jobs.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: I work at an aviation repair facility and we picked up a few of the laid over workers from DHL in Wilmington.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: They were rattling over some of the wages they were making. Some of them were making north of $34 an hour and I don’t think we are paying them at our place. What I’m seeing here is with declining wages you have a declining tax base. So you have a declining tax base with government spending growing. It’s a mathematical impossibility to solve. You go anywhere… I was going to the grocery and I had a 55-year-old man bagging my groceries. I mean, there are no good jobs to go back to. We have no manufacturing.

RUSH: In fact, the regime has put out stories saying that many of these jobs that we lost are not going to be replaced.

CALLER: Yes, yes.

RUSH: And they are going the try to blame that on George W Bush.

CALLER: Well, I’m going to tell you something that happened to my dad. In 1980 or ’79, he got laid off from Ford Motor Company but when things did turn around — thank God for Reagan — he got called back.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: These guys who are getting laid off from General Motors, they’re tearing the building down. They are not going back to good jobs.

RUSH: No, and you know what? General Motors CEO, by the way, Mr. Whitacre, is out there saying, ‘You know what? We don’t like being Government Motors. We don’t like people talking about being owned by the government. We’re going to go out and we’re going to have an IPO. We are going to have an Initial Public Offering! We’re going to go back and go public. We’re going to sell stock. We’re going to have investors.’ Now, how many people are going to want to pony up and invest in General Motors given what happened to General Motors and Chrysler the last time? Who is going to want to invest in had a company that is being run by the union? The union is the vast… I think in the case of Chrysler (one of the two, Chrysler or General Motors) the union is the majority owner.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Andy, Frisco, Texas, you are on open line Friday. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush. Hey teacher. Hey, rabbi of the conservative temple. Here is what I have to say to you. Here is the flaw in President Obama’s auto logic. What person in their right mind is going to go out right now and take out a car loan for $50,000 or more on a vehicle that will be worth less than half when it’s paid for? It’s not going to happen.

RUSH: What, are we talking about? Are you talking about the Volt by any chance here?

CALLER: No, sir. I’m talking about any car note. I have been through this. We’re getting through it. Let me tell you, Rush: I will never have another car note again. If I can’t afford to pay for it up front, I won’t buy it. I suspect there are a lot of Americans out there who think just like I do — and here we are, God help us, throwing stimulus money after an industry that is predicated upon people going to a bank and borrowing money they don’t have in the first place! Mark my words: The auto successes that he claims are going to be short-lived.

RUSH: Well, you know, General Motors just did buy a lending company in the private sector. Which means the government now owns a lending company. Now, what story are you bouncing off of? You said Obama talked about car sales? What did I miss here?

CALLER: From what I understand from what you said and what I hear, he talks about how the stimulus is a success and that is just not true. It’s a fallacy. It is based upon him taking money that we don’t have in the first place and giving it to the automakers. Look at what General Motors did. He came out a few months ago, Whitacre did, and said, ‘We’re a success. We’re paying these loans off.’ No, they didn’t. They robbed Peter to pay Paul. That’s what I’m talking about.

RUSH: Oh, okay. Well, yeah. All right. I thought there was something new that Obama said about cars. Yeah, there’s no question you’re right.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: John in Medford, Oregon, welcome to the EIB Network and Open Line Friday. Hi.

CALLER: Hi, Rush, an honor to speak with you this afternoon. I just want to encourage Obama to continue spouting these speeches about the economy recovery, because I feel like those of us out here in the private sector, we’re experiencing the exact opposite with perfect clarity. Those of us who still have jobs — I’m one of the still fortunate to have a job — we’re extremely insecure with our situation.

RUSH: I agree. Let him go out there and keep touting his great economy. That is why I say, ‘When we get to 10% unemployment, let’s throw a huge party.’ I mean, he is celebrating now at 9.5%, patting himself on the back. He’s talking about all the great things happening out there. We lose 131,000 jobs in the month of July and he talks about all the jobs we’re gaining? Keep it up. And run against Bush? Right on. Right on. He’s beginning to believe all this pap. He’s living the lie.